3 Tips for Googling Like a Guru

Do you ever have trouble finding the right search terms when looking for specific pieces of information?

Here are four quick tips that could help you narrow down your search to exactly what you're looking for.

#1 Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore'

Quotation marks (not The Raven, I'm afraid) can be a huge help in narrowing search results. Putting quotation marks before and after two or more words will return results containing that exact phrase.

For instance, putting quotation marks around quoth the raven will return results with those exact words in that exact order.

#2 Take away the minus

If you're looking for, say, information on diabetes, the kind with Type I and Type II, and you keep getting hits with "insipidous" in them, use the dash.

A dash before a word will eliminate pages with that word. So your search would be "diabetes-insipidous."

So use a dash. It's like word-math!

#3 The dots have it

So, you need the number of skin infections between 1920 and 1940. Use the ol' double-dot trick.

Two periods, placed between two numbers, tell the search engine to use the numbers as a range, like this:

          skin infections 1920..1940

Now, all that said, please know that today's search engines are just terrific at presenting what you're looking for. Sure, Google is probably most accurate, but Bing and Yahoo! aren't far behind.

Now...Seach away!

Unquote and the Great Dick Cavett

[caption id="attachment_406" align="alignright" width="211" caption="Edgar and said Raven "][/caption]

"Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'"

Unquote.

For years and years if I quoted someone, I would finish with the word "unquote."

It never made sense to me, really. I mean, unquote? It was a quote but now it's an unquote?

But I didn't think much about it either. That's what other people said, so I figured it must be the correct word.

Then, many years later, I read a piece by the amazingly brilliant Dick Cavett, author and talk show host extraordinaire.

He said no, it's not unquote, it's end quote.

Now that made sense. You start the quote with "quote," say the quote, and then end it with "end quote."

[caption id="attachment_407" align="alignright" width="116" caption="Dick Cavett"][/caption]

And so, dear reader, the next time you quote someone, say "End quote," not "Unquote," and think of the great Dick Cavett when you do.

I couldn't possibly end this blog without a Cavett quote, so here it is:

"As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it."

Perhaps not the best quote for this particular piece. Nonetheless, end quote.